


THE CASE OF THE MUDRED LAMBY

by luminality



Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Hover over the underlined words and win a prize, Humor, M/M, Mentions of Fatphobia/Diet Talk, Mikael has two dads and he loves them both, Post-Canon, The Detective Boy Mikael fic that no one asked for, Trant's Special Parenting Style (TM), but we all deserve, they're growing children so they're always hungry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:20:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29653293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luminality/pseuds/luminality
Summary: Someone has mudrer--murdred---mudred--killed Lamby! It's up to Junior Detective Mikael Heidelstam and his friends to find out who the killer is before he strikes again! (And hopefully before snacktime too.)
Relationships: Trant Heidelstam/Jean Vicquemare
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	1. Breakfast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Before you start reading, I'd like to explain something first.
> 
> This fic has a Gimmick.
> 
> As you read through it, you'll see underlined words like this. If you hover your cursor above these words, you should see some text appear (try it out on the underlined "this"). These hover-texts contain supplementary info about that underlined word. Do you have to read them? No. But you'll be missing out on a *lot* if you skip them. 
> 
> You could read the entire chapter first, then go back to the underlined words. Or you can check them out as you encounter them. Whichever works best for you. 
> 
> Enjoy! :)

Dawn breaks out over Revachol. The sun peeks out of the horizon, groans, then shuffles drowsily up the sky. The rest of the city follows suit: parents tumble out of bed to wake their children; newspaper boys sally forth on their burdened bicycles; cafés roll up their shutters to bless the world with freshly brewed coffee; and slowly, but surely, motor carriages converge on Main Street like globs of fat in an hypertensive’s arteries. 

Meanwhile, deep within the decayed bowels of Fort Agmar, a lone knight lifts his sword and plunges it into his foe’s scaly flank.

The Grand Würm screams, a ghastly, earth-shaking screech that would have reduced any other man to a snivelling infant. But not Ser Mikael. No--He has sailed across the five seas, hiked snow-capped mountains, and trudged through chocolate bogs just to reach this fort. He will not let victory be taken from him. Not now, when his prize lies within arm’s reach. 

Blood gushes out of the würm’s wound in red, hot spurts. Ser Mikael wrenches his sword free, which earns him another deafening roar, and darts away just in time to avoid the massive talons that cleave the air where he was standing. 

He whips around, sword and shield held ready. The würm paces in front of him, blood dripping down its obsidian scales, tongues of flame flickering from its cavernous maw. Behind it, Ser Mikael sees the Luminous Lance---its hilt encrusted with rubies and emeralds, its blade forged from the purest meteorite steel---glistening atop a mound of gold coins like a banner planted on a mountain peak. 

“ _For Nygglefstein_!!!” he yells, charging sword-first as the würm rears back and--

Their battle-to-the-death is interrupted by two raps on Ser Mikael’s bedroom door. 

“Mikael!” His father’s voice calls out. “Time for school!”

“Coming!” Ser Mikael replies. 

He looks apologetically at the Grand Würm. 

“Sorry,” he says. “I’ll slay you tonight, I promise!”

The würm belches out a small sad ball of fire. At least Mik thinks he does. It’s hard to tell since the würm’s just green words on his radiocomputer screen. 

He quickly types in the shutdown code. Fort Agmar and the Grand Würm blip out of existence, and Mikael (also known as Ser Mikael Gareth Heidelstam, Champion of the Seven Isolas, Guardian of Nygglefstein, and the Rightful Wielder of the Luminous Lance) unplugs the console before rushing to the bathroom to get ready for school. 

He shows up at the kitchen just as his father is setting down the pancakes on the table. 

“Morning, cub!” Trant says as Mikael hops onto a chair. “Did you sleep well last night?”

“Mmhmmm!” Mikael takes the table napkin and ties it around his neck. His dad used to do this for him, but he’s a big boy now, so he can do it himself. He can do a lot of things by himself now. Like tie his shoelaces. And reach the jar of cookies on the kitchen counter. “I woke up early to slay the Grand Würm!”

Any other parent would have scolded Mikael, or at least frowned at him severely, for sacrificing his sleep to play a radiocomputer game. But Mikael’s dad isn’t like other parents. After all, Mikael’s pretty sure that none of his friends’ parents make them read essays on in-dus-tree-al psychology. Or com-part-ative literature.

“Really now?” Trant asks brightly as he slices his pancakes into four equal quadrants, then into tiny squares. “And what did this Grand Würm look like?”

“He was big! Really big!” Mikael crows, spreading his arms to illustrate the really big-ness of the Grand Würm. “It had black scales, red eyes, and...and it could breathe fire too! Like this!”

He takes a big gulp of air and unleashes a mighty air-breath attack on his defenseless pancakes. Trant manages to look genuinely impressed. 

“Wow, that sounds really scary!” Trant pops a square of pancake into his mouth. He chews and swallows before speaking again. “Was it guarding any treasure?”

“Yep! May I have the syrup please? Thank you.” After drizzling an acceptable amount of syrup onto his traumatized pancakes, Mikael slices them into four slightly-less-than-equal quadrants, then into four-cornered shapes that look more or less like squares. He pops a piece into his mouth, chews, then swallows before speaking again. “It was guarding the Luminous Lance and lots and lots and _lots_ of gold coins!”

“Ah! I see that the developers have taken a page straight out of ‘The Master of the Crags’,’” his father says in the tone of voice that Mikael has learned to associate with an incoming Educational Experience. “The trope of the greedy würm guarding its pile of treasure from intrepid explorers hails all the way back to the 8th century, when Huron the Elder wrote his masterpiece…”

Mikael nods and works through his pancakes. Every now and then, his father mentions a word that he recognizes, like “coins”, “battle”, “phenomenology,” and of course, “würm.” Mik makes sure to nod whenever he hears those so that his dad wouldn’t feel bad. 

“Anyway,” Trant says, after a lengthy exposition on the origins of literary archetypes in medieval Suresne literature, “I’m sure that Grand Würm didn’t stand a chance against Ser Mikael Gareth Heidelstam, Champion of the Seven Isolas, Guardian of Nygglefstein, and the Rightful Wielder of the Luminous Lance!”

Mikael beams. If there’s one thing that his dad is really good at, it’s remembering really long phrases. 

“I didn’t get to slay it, though,” he confesses, poking his last square of pancake. “Is it okay if I play a bit after school today? I promise to do my homework first!”

Trant studies him over the rim of his coffee cup. “Promises are special, Mikael,” he says solemnly. “We shouldn’t make them lightly. Even if it’s just about homework.”

Mikael nods. “I know! I’m a knight, so my word is bronze!”

“Gold,” his father gently says. 

“Gold!” Mikael repeats. He puts his right hand over his lungs. “I promise to finish my homework before slaying the Grand Würm. Or I’m not the Champion of the Seven Isolas, Guardian of Nygglefstein, and the Rightful Wielder of the Luminous Lance!”

His father laughs, a sound that always reminds Mikael of warm, golden syrup on fluffy pancakes. “Alright. I’ll hold you to your word, Ser Mikael.”

They clean up the kitchen together. Then, after double-checking the contents of Mikael’s schoolbag and triple-checking the contents of Trant’s briefcase, the two of them hop into the car and drive to school.

...only to drive back minutes later to pick up Mikael’s wurm-themed lunchbox.

* * *

Mikael’s school is not like other schools. 

For one, they don’t have any classes. They don’t have any teachers either, except for Miss Sylvie, who’s a learning facilitator, not a teacher. What they do have is a nice building with lots of books, educational toys, and most of all, lots and lots and _lots_ of free time.

He used to go to a regular school until last year, when the Incident occurred. It had been a small thing, really--His Science teacher, Mr. Peregrine, had said that mammals who lived in cold climates were protected by an insulating layer of fat called “bubbler.” Which was obviously wrong. So Mikael raised his hand and corrected him.

Mr. Peregrine had gone very still.

“Excuse me?” he asked quietly. 

Mikael hesitated. Everyone was looking at him, even Jimmy Dawson, who slept through most of their classes. But like his father always said, “Truth is truth, no matter how badly you advertise it.” 

So Mikael mustered up his courage and said, “Blubber, sir. It’s blubber, not bubbler.”

Everyone looked at Mr. Peregrine.

“Thank you, Mr. Heidelstam.” Mr. Peregrine had this habit of calling everyone “Mister” or “Miss”, as if they were all forty-seven years old instead of seven. “But I think I know my Science, thank you very much.”

“I’m sure you do, sir,” Mikael said, displaying the good-natured loquaciousness that is the trademark of the Heidelstam lineage. “But it really is blubber. Not bubbler. It says so in ‘Zoology for Undergraduates’, second edition.”

His classmates had looked at him in awe. They’d never heard about zoology or undergraduates before. 

They looked at Mr. Peregrine again, whose face looked as red as Marianne's pencil case. 

Long story short, Mr. Peregrine called for an emergency parent-teacher meeting with Mikael’s father. The meeting lasted for a long time. Mikael remembers how long it lasted, because he and his Uncle Jean waited outside the meeting room. They played a lot of rock-paper-scissors and tic-tac-toe. Jean told him plenty of interesting stories about detectives and criminals. Then, after valiantly staying awake for the first hour, Mikael succumbed to his sadness and anxiety and fell asleep on Jean’s lap. 

When he woke up, Jean was carrying him back to their car. His father was walking with them, and he looked very tired.

Mikael stopped going to that school the following week.

* * *

“Good morning, Mikael!” Ms. Sylvie says as Mikael walks into the school lobby by himself. “How are you doing today?”

“Morning, Ms. Sylvie!” Mikael likes Ms. Sylvie. She’s really nice, and always comes up with interesting things for them to do, like pinball tournaments and mixing mocktails. She never got mad at them too, not even when Luke and Leo flushed down their coloring pages down the toilet and ate all their crayons. “I almost slayed a würm today!”

Ms. Sylvie gasped. “Really? You must be really tired then.”

Mikael shakes his head. “Nuh-uh! I slept for eight hours first so I could wake up early to slay it. It’s really, really hard to slay a würm when you’re sleep-depraved."

“You mean ‘sleep-deprived,’” Ms. Sylvie says, smiling. She takes his lunchbox, places it on the Snacks Table, then claps her hands. “So! What are you hoping to learn today?”

With great excitement, Mikael opens his backpack and pulls out a large, folded piece of paper. “My mom gave me this map of the world!” he says, brandishing said map as if it held the secrets to the universe. “I wanna copy it, then color it, then put animals on it, then find where my house is, then I’m gonna--”

As Mikael prattles on about his personal World Geography curriculum, Sylvie relaxes. Kids like Mikael made her job _so_ much easier. Too bad there was only one of him. 

This school used to be a cafeteria, before the Incident happened. Afterwards, the former manager, Lawrence Garte, decided that life was too short to keep serving beer to ungrateful bastards who would just riddle the place with bullets anyway, so he decided to convert the building--jukebox, pinball machines, pre-revolutionary tilework and all--into a place where the new generation could learn how to live in peace and harmony with each other, regardless of their socio-economic classes.

And so the Whirling-in-Ragamuffins was born.

Now, Garte knew that there were Procedures you needed to follow when you set up a school. He also knew that no one would bother to check if he skipped most of those Procedures. Still, he was nothing but a prudent man, so he went ahead and checked out three books on Educational Philosophy from the Jamrock Public Library. 

He hit jackpot on the third book.

Two weeks later, pamphlets started popping up in the places where pamphlets usually popped up. It was a very well-designed pamphlet, and it spoke about a new educational center situated in the cozy, seaside district of Martinaise where young minds will be allowed to flourish by nurturing their natural capacities for wonder, curiosity, and innovation, which traditional schools--those oppressive, soul-sucking slave factories--systematically stifle with outdated curricula, incorrect textbooks, and close-minded teachers.

There will be an Open House on Tuesday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Snacks will be served.

One of these pamphlets ended up, providentially, on the desk of one Mr. Trant Wentworth Heidelstam. He picked it up, read it, then immediately went to file a leave of absence for Tuesday.

And the rest was history.

"--then I'll make my _own_ map and, and _my_ own animals, and put my house in my _own_ isola, and--and---"

...Or in Mikael's case, geography and zoology.

"That sounds great, Mik!" Sylvie says with the enthusiasm and the thinly veiled desperation of a woman who agreed to host a party, only to find the entire neighborhood at her front door. She gently shepherds Mikael towards the playroom, which used to be the Débardeurs' Union Booth, but now serves as the headquarters of an even more menacing posse. "Lily and her brothers are already in the playroom. Let me know if you need anything, okay?"

“Alright!” Mikael waves at her before pushing the playroom doors open. He really loves his new school. Back in his old school, he had to do the same thing his classmates were doing,  even though he already knew how to do them. He would always finish tasks before everyone else, and when he tried talking to his classmates about in-dus-tree-al psychology and com-part-ative literature, they just laughed at him or picked their noses.

Cheered by his newfound intellectual freedom, Mikael skips over to his schoolmates, Lily, Luke, and Leo, who are silently congregated around fallen object on the floor...

“Hi, guys!” he says. “What are you looking at?”

Then he sees Lamby.

...Or rather, what’s left of Lamby.

Everyone in school knows Lamby. He’s Lily’s stuffed lamb toy, and also the most well-behaved student in the entire Whirling. He and Lily are inseparable—They eat together, play together, nap together, and even go to the Little Girls’ Room together. He’s nice, soft, and smells a little bit like drool. Mikael knows this because Lily let him hug Lamby on his first day here, which made Mikael feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Someone's ripped Lamby’s head off. It now stares up at the four of them with its one remaining button-eye, while his body, surrounded by tufts of stuffing, lies forlornly by Leo’s feet.

Mikael stares at this grisly scene, horrified. Someone sniffs. He looks up and sees Lily, her face streaked with tears, nose runny with snot, biting her lip to stifle her sobs. He looks at Luke and Leo. They look like they’re about to cry too.

Mikael’s lip starts to tremble. His vision turns blurry, but he shakes his head and snaps out of it.

“What happened?” he asks, voice trembing. “Who hurt Lamby?!”

Luke sniffs and wipes his nose on his sleeve. Mikael knows it’s Luke because of the little mole on his right nostril.

“Dunno who did it,” he mutters. “But when we get ‘im, we’re gonna punch ‘im real hard.”

“Yeah,” Leo chimes in. “No one makes Lily cry ‘cept us.”

Lily says nothing. Big fat teardrops roll down her cheeks, but she doesn’t let out a single sob. This baffles Mikael even more than seeing Lamby’s headless corpse. If he’d been Lily, he would have been bawling his eyes out and running to Ms. Sylvie...

“I’ll go get Ms. Sylvie!” Mikael says. “She’ll know what to do!”

Luke and Leo quickly block his way. “No!” they say in unison.

“We can’t let Ms. Sylvie know!” Luke whispers. “She’ll think we dunnit!”

"She'll tell our Mom," Leo says, his eyes wide with fear. "Then our Mom won't let us play outside for...for... _forever_!"

The three of them briefly contemplate the dreadful thought of playing indoors for eternity. They all shudder.

Meanwhile, Lily walks over to Lamby's body, crouches down, and gently cradles it to her chest.

"I--I'm ( _hiccup)_ sorry, Lamby..." she murmurs through her tears. "I didn't mean to...( _hiccup_ ) leave you..."

"Lily went out to get somethin' for their stupid tea party," Leo whispers to Mikael, pointing to the little table where a plastic tea set had been lovingly set for two. "Luke and I were playing upstairs."

"We came down 'cuz we were hungry," Luke says without missing a beat. "But Ms. Sylvie said it wasn't snacktime yet, so we went here."

"Lily was crying already, and Lamby was..." Leo trails off. He runs a thumb across his throat slowly while making a " _srrrrrrrk_ " sound. 

Mikael shivers. He really, really, _really_ wants to tell Ms. Sylvie about this. Or call his dad. Or his mom. Or Uncle Jean...

He pauses. 

Uncle Jean...

He gasps. 

_Uncle Jean!_

"Lamby's been murdered!" Mikael exclaims. "We gotta find out who did it!"

Lily, Leo, and Luke stare at him in confusion. 

"Mudrer?" Leo tilts his head. "Whassat?"

"Murder," Mikael repeats. "It's when someone kills someone else."

The siblings take a moment to process this new vocabulary word.

"Our Mom kills fish all the time. Does that mean she mur...murdred them?" Luke asks hopefully.

"No, you can't murder animals. You can only murder people," Mikael says with complete certainty. 

Leo frowns. "But Lamby's an animal--"

"No, he isn't!" Lily exclaims, jumping to her feet. "Lamby's my best friend! And someone mudrered him!"

"Murdered," Mikael says with the same infinite patience as his father.

"Murdered!" Lily crows happily, Lamby's decapitated body still dangling from her arms.

"How we gonna find out who did it?" Luke asks. "Are we gonna call the po-leees?"

Mikael shakes his head. "No. We're going to do something _better_ ," he says. "We're gonna be _detectives!_ "

"Oooooooooo," Lily and her brothers say in a choir of awed voices.

"My Uncle Jean's a detective," Mikael says, his little chest puffed with pride. "He solves murders all the time! He's told me lots of stories about them!"

Luke raises his hand.

"So...deeee-teck-tives catch murder-people?"

"Murderers," Mikael says. "Yeah, they do!"

"But we're just kids," Leo points out. His siblings nod to support the logic of his statement. "We're no dee-teck-tives. Only grown-ups can be dee-teck-tives."

"How do you know that?" Mikael asks. "You just found out what detectives are right now."

Leo opens his mouth, closes it again, then scrunches his eyebrows. Why does thinking have to be so hard?!

"Okay," he grudgingly concedes. "I'm in."

"Me too!" Luke says. 

"Me three!" Lily chirps, her grief over her murdered stuffed toy temporarily overpowered by her excitement to play the Detective Game. 

"Alright!" Mikael says, giddy with excitement. This is way better than drawing some stupid map of the world! "We'll have to investigate real quietly so that Ms. Sylvie doesn't find out."

Everyone nods. They can be quiet. They don't do it very often, but they can do it, when push comes to shove. 

"So what do we do first, Mik?" Lily asks.

"Yeah, you're the only one who knows how to dee-teck, so you're gonna have to tell us what to do," Leo says.

Mikael thinks about it. His Uncle Jean's told him lots of stories, but the bits that Mikael remembers best were the ones that had lots of running and shooting. But he does remember a paper that his Dad made him read. A paper on fo-ren-sick psychology...

"Okay," he nods firmly. "This is what we're gonna do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I blame this all on ZA/UM, and Sir Terry Pratchett (may he rest in peace).
> 
> Thank you for reading, everyone! Kudos and comments are welcome, and I'd love to hear your favorite hovered-text line. :)
> 
> (Next chapter: The Investigation Begins!)


	2. Snacktime

Junior Detective Mikael Heidelstam glares at his subordinates. 

“Officer Private Major Luke,” he says in his best grown-up voice, “have you secured the perimeter?”

Luke salutes. The cardboard loop on his wrist drops to his elbow. “Aye, sir!” 

Mikael proceeds to examine the criss-crossed fence of masking tape that rings the crime scene. Luke did a pretty good job, actually. The fence covers around half of the playroom and comes up to Mikael’s shoulder, so nosy civilians won't disrupt their investigation. It’s also supported by several makeshift posts, which includes four chairs, three desks, two bookshelves, and a teddy bear. Luke even scribbled “CRIME SEEN GIT OUT” all over the tape in black crayon, which must have taken him a while to do.

“Officer Private Major Leo!” Mikael says. 

Leo salutes too. “Yeah?”

“You gotta say, ‘Aye, sir,’” his twin brother whispers. 

“Why? Ain’t ‘yeah’ and ‘aye’ the same thing?” Leo says, frowning.

Everyone else thinks about that for a moment.

Mikael recovers first. “Have you autopsized the victim?” he asks.

“Mmhmm.” Leo pulls out a tattered notebook from his pocket, then squints at a page.

“Lamby got his head ripped off,” he solemnly declares. 

He closes his notebook.

“That’s it?” Mikael asks. He’s never heard an autopsy before, but he has a really strong feeling that it should be longer than one sentence.

“Aye,” says Leo, who has also never heard an autopsy before, but who has also been exposed to far fewer sentences than Mikael. “What else is there?”

“Was there any blood? Did you find any bullets? Were any of his organs missing?” Mikael asks with increasing hopefulness.

Leo thinks about it. 

“Nah,” he says. “He just got his head ripped off.”

Mikael sighs. Autopsizing wasn’t as exciting as he thought it would be.

"Officer Private Major Lily!" he says.   
  
"Aye, sir!" Lily chirps, saluting much more cheerfully than her brothers. There's a nub of white chalk between her fingers. 

"Did you draw the chalk outline around the body?"

"Yup!" Lily points to the floor. "I drew 'round his head and the fluffy pieces, just like you told me to!"

Mikael studies her handiwork. There is indeed a chalk outline drawn around Lamby's severed head, along with a halo, a pair of angel's wings, and several white flowers. Smaller chalk outlines, with much fewer embellishments, surround the pieces of stuffing strewn around the floor. Then there's the outline around his body...

"Lily?" 

"Hmm?"

"Where's the body?" Mikael asks, frowning at the small, headless, four-limbed, and very empty chalk outline. 

"Oh!" Lily skips over to the chalk outline and deposits Lamby's corpse onto it. "Sorry! He looked real lonely, lyin’ there by himself."

She carefully arranges Lamby’s limbs to fit the outline before zipping back to her brothers.

Mikael sighs again. Detective work is _hard_. No wonder his Uncle Jean looks tired all the time. 

"Good work, everyone!" he says. "Now that the crime scene's secured, we can start looking for clues."

Lily raises her hand.

"What're clooos?" she asks.

"Well," Mikael says, unconsciously adopting his father's Educational Experience Tone. "Clues are stuff that'll help us figure out who killed Lamby. Stuff that the killer left behind, like, like...footprints! Or broken glass! Or a bloody kitchen knife!"

His friends look around the crime scene. 

"Don't see any of those," Luke says. He turns to his brother. "You see anythin’?"

Leo shakes his head. "Nuh-uh," he says, sounding a bit disappointed. He would've wanted to see a bloody kitchen knife, at least.

"What if...What if the killer didn't leave any clues?" Lily asks, her eyes wide with worry. "Does that mean we won't catch them?"

“Killers _always_ leave clues behind," Mikael says with the absolute certainty of a seven-year-old whose knowledge of killers consists entirely of the ones that his Uncle Jean’s managed to catch. "They're not very smart. If they were, they wouldn't have killed Lamby in the first place!"

The siblings nod. That’s a really good point.

“Clues are hard to find too,” Mikael continues, warming up to the topic. “You need a mag-knee-fire glass to spot the really, really small ones!”

The twins perk up at the sound of the word “fire.” 

"D'you have one of those?" Leo asks hopefully. 

"No," Mikael admits. "But that's okay!" he quickly adds when his friends' faces fall. "There's four of us, so we'll be able to spot all the clues in no time!"

Luke raises his hand. 

"Can clues be big, or do they all gotta be small?"

"They can be big," Mikael replies.

"Okay," Luke says. 

He points to the open window above a bookshelf-slash-masking-tape-fence-post.

"The window's open, and the stuff under it’s all messed up,” he says. “Is that a clue?"

His friends stare at the window.

Then they look at the toppled books on top of the bookshelf.

"It's usually closed, right?" Luke continues in the oblivious manner of a farmer who just discovered a really weird-looking rock in his garden that turns out to be the Cocaine Skull. “It was open this morning though. We didn’t bother closing it ‘cause it was too high up.”

"That's right!" Leo lifts his chin, basking in his twin brother's accidental moment of glory. "We didn't close it 'cuz it was too high up," he repeats for emphasis. 

Mikael doesn't know how to feel about this. On the one hand, they've just discovered their first clue! On the other hand, he wasn't the one who discovered it. And _he's_ the Junior Detective around here, not Luke! 

He briefly surveys his options. First, he could throw a tantrum. He hasn't thrown one in a long time, so he might be rusty. Second, he could act like the big boy that he is and congratulate Luke for finding the really obvious clue that Mikael should really have seen first--

The urge to throw a tantrum intensifies. 

In the end, Mikael settles for the cushy middle. 

He pouts.

“Good job, Luke,” he says grudgingly. “That’s a really good clue!”

His friends beam. Finding clues is easy!

Bolstered by Luke’s success, they comb the play area for the next thirty minutes. Mikael gives them one alphabet block each and tells them to put these next to any clues that they find. 

"We shouldn't move things around," he says as he hands out the blocks. "That's called 'disturbing the crime scene', and it's a big no-no for detectives!"

The siblings look at the crime scene. It seems pretty disturbed already, with tape-barricade, the chalk outlines, and Lamby's mangled body. But hey, Mikael's the detective around here, not them. 

Once all the blocks are in place, they tally their finds. 

> Exhibit A (Luke) - A large dust bunny (approx. two thumbs long and one thumb wide)
> 
> Exhibit B (Leo) - A moldy, half-eaten cookie ("So that's where it went!" Luke says before pocketing the cookie for future consumption.)
> 
> Exhibit C (Lily) - A Princess Prolly story book (dog-eared front cover; nibble marks on the edges of page 3)
> 
> Exhibit D (Mikael) - A toppled chair (next to the table with the tea set)

"Did we do good, Mik?" Lily asks in the manner of a child who's very much hoping that the answer will be yes. 

"Erm," Mikael says.

"'Course we did." Leo nods to himself. "We found a buncha clues. A grown-up couldn't have done as good as we did."

"Mmmm," Mikael says, glancing around discreetly for the nearest exit.

"That's right," Luke says. "We did _real_ good."

They all look at Mikael expectantly.

If Mikael were his father, he would have stammered something about how murder investigations were quite outside his area of expertise, he wasn't sure what he was doing here actually and oh, will you look at the time! He'd better get going. So sorry he couldn't be more helpful.

But since his backpedalling instincts haven't fully developed yet, he looks at his friends' eager faces, then at their sad little pile of clues, and tells them the truth.

"I think we did our best," he says.

Lily and the twins don't t know a lot of words yet, but they _do_ know what 'best' means.

General jubilation occurs. Lily jumps and shouts, "YAY!" while her brothers exchange Ace's Highs. Then, Leo raises his hand. 

"We can be Junior Detectives now, right?" he asks. "We found them clues, after all."

Before Mikael can go "Erm," once again, he's saved by the sound of the playroom door being pushed open.

"Hi, everyone!" a cheerful voice says. "Sorry I'm--"

The voice breaks off. 

The four little detectives stare at the newcomer, who's looking at the tape-barricade with a baffled expression.

"Hi, Annette!" Lily says, waving happily. "Come join us! We're playin' dee-teck-tives!"

The Whirling's current student population can be counted on two hands. Within this population, those who can count _beyond_ two hands can be counted on four fingers: Pam and Pauline Méjean, Mikael, and Annette. 

Mikael likes Annette. They have a lot in common—They both love to read, enjoy doing crossword puzzles, don't have any siblings, and have parents who hoist grown-up things upon them. Most of the books in the Whirling’s libary were donated by Annette's mother, Plaisance, who used to own a bookstore nearby. She closed it down last year, though, after a spirit medium had confirmed that yes, the place was indeed cursed, hexed, jinxed, bewitched, star-crossed, ill-omened, and most of all, haunted by the spectral hand of the market.

...Oh, and there’s a novelty dicemaker living in the chimney. She’s harmless, though.

Plaisance didn’t heed these dire warnings right away. Her husband had poured a significant amount of capital into that bookselling venture, and something deep within her ultraliberal soul flinched at the thought of letting all that money go to waste. So she dithered and pondered and paced around her cursed bookshop while Annette watched on, nervous and unsure of what the future held for Crimes, Romances, and Biographies of Famous People.

Then the Incident happened.

Two months later, once Plaisance was able to set foot in the wrecked shell of the bookstore without screaming, crying, and babbling ancient Iilmarian incantations of protection, she salvaged all the books, board games, and other knick knacks that weren’t too badly riddled by bullets and donated these to the new school that had opened next door. She attended the Open House too, just to reassure herself that her Investment was going to be put to good use. It had been a pleasant affair. Garte served snacks. Sylvie made mocktails. A blonde gentleman with laugh lines around his eyes asked several questions during the Q&A session.

In the end, Plaisance decided to send Annette to the Whirling as well. She was one of the school's benefactors, after all. 

Mikael glimpses Ms. Sylvie carefully arranging the Snack Table behind Annette. 

"Nette!" he hisses while executing a series of panicked gestures that roughly translate to, " _Close the door!!!_ "

Annette gets the message. She closes the door as quietly as she can, then jogs over to the tape-barricade.

"Wow," she says, running her hand over Luke's architectural masterpiece. "This is a really great fence, guys!" 

Luke gives her a gap-toothed grin. Upon seeing this, Leo pouts and raises his hand.

"I helped write the words on the tape," he graciously informs Annette. " _And_ I autopsized Lamby!"

Annette's not sure what "autopsized" means. But it's nothing that a quick peek at a dictionary won't fix.

"That sounds really cool, Luke—"

Leo's lower lip begins to wobble dangerously. 

"—I mean, Leo!" Annette says with an apologetic smile. She shifts her attention to Lily and Mikael to avoid a diplomatic incident. "You said you were playing a detective game?"

"Yeah!" Lily says, practically bouncing with delight. "Mik's teaching us how to play dee-teck-tive so we can catch the bad person who hurt Lamby!" 

Annette frowns. "The bad person who--"

Then she looks down, sees Lamby, and gasps. 

"Lamby!!! What happened???"

"Somebody ripped his head off," Leo says, proud to be in his area of expertise once again. 

The four of them give Annette a quick rundown of the events that led up to the discovery of Lamby's body, then take turns marching up to the fence to show her the clues they've found. She dutifully "oohs" and "aahs" over Luke's dust bunny and Lily's storybook, wrinkles her nose at Leo's cookie, and nods with approval at Mikael's toppled chair. 

"It's just like a Dick Mullen mystery!" she says afterwards. 

Luke and Leo snigger. 

"Mom says 'dick' is a bad word," Luke says.

"Yeah, she says we're not allowed to say it 'till we're older," Leo chimes in. 

"'Dick' is his nickname," Annette says, valiantly defending her literary hero. "He's a detective from a book, and he's solved a _million_ murders. In fact," she lowers her voice to a whisper, "he even solved his _own_ murder!"

The children gasp. Mikael makes a mental note to ask his Uncle Jean if he's ever solved his own murder. And also what 'dick' means.

"Have you come up with a deduction yet?" Annette asks "It's a guess about what you think happened to Lamby, based on the clues that you found," she says, anticipating the needs of her little audience. 

Lily and the twins look at Mikael.

"Well," he says, with a confidence that he doesn't really feel, "I think the killer came through the window when Lily was out. Then they attacked Lamby there," he points to the toppled chair, "and escaped out the window again before Lily came back."

Annette smiles. "That's a really good deduction, Mik! I was..." She sniffs. "I was..."

She sneezes, a tiny, squeaky sound that's less of an "ACHOO!" and more of a, " _chew_!" If mice could sneeze, Mikael thinks, they would sound just like that. 

"Excuse me." She sniffs and wipes her nose on the sleeve of her coat. "I was just about to say that I had the same deduction as you!"

Lily and her brothers look at Mikael with awe. His cheeks grow warm. 

"But how're we gonna catch the killer if they escaped?" Luke asks. He looks at the window with excitement. "Are we gonna jump out the window too?"

"Good question." Annette strokes her chin, which makes her look very smart indeed. The children copy her immediately. "We'll need to go out and check the yard for more clues. They could have left a footprint. Or the murder weapon!"

The children stop stroking their chins. 

"The...the yard?" Lily asks, her voice small and scared. 

"We can't go to the yard," Leo says quietly. 

Luke nods. "Yeah. The Coocoos are gonna _kill_ us."

Mikael's heard of the Coocoos. Everyone in school's scared of them. They're the reason why no one's allowed to go into the yard, except for grown-ups like Ms. Sylvie, Mr. Garte, and the nice gardener lady. 

Luke and Leo drew a picture of the Coocoos for Mikael once. It featured lots of teeth. And horns. And the color red. 

"They're not so bad," Annette says. Then, she frowns. "Well, at least Cuno isn't. Anyway," she brightens up again, “they might have seen the killer, so we should interview them."

"Maybe _they're_ the killers," Leo whispers, his round little face as pale as a grimy moon. "Maybe _they_ jumped through the window and ripped Lamby's head off."

Lily looks at the window, then at Lamby's chalk-outlined body. Her lower lip trembles, but she scowls and stands up straighter. 

"I wanna talk to them," she says. "I wanna find out why they hurt Lamby!"

Annette reaches over the fence to ruffle Lily’s hair. “I’m sure the Coocoos didn’t hurt Lamby, Lil. They might be mean, but they’re not that mean.” She pauses. “Okay, maybe Esse could have. But Cuno wouldn’t let her do something like that.”

“I’ll go too,” Mikael says, even though his knees feel all wobbly and his stomach's churning like a pleasure wheel. “I’m about to slay a Grand Würm tonight, _and_ I’m a detective. So I’m not afraid of any Coocoos!”

Luke and Leo exchange a look.

“We ain’t scared either,” Leo says. He punches his brother’s shoulder. “Right, Luke?”

Luke rubs his shoulder. “Yeah.” He punches his brother too, but _harder_. “We’re gonna beat up the Coocoos if they try to kill us.”

Leo’s face turns red, which Annette wisely interprets as her cue to step in.

“Great! Let’s go eat our snacks, then we can head out and talk to the Coocoos.”

The word “snacks” douses the flames of war faster than an international peace treaty. Luke and Leo glare at each other one last time, silently agreeing to postpone their pointless squabble until after snacktime.

With their course of action decided, Annette heads for the door. She should check out 'Dick Mullen and the Monkey-faced Murderer' from the library, she thinks to herself. The killer in that story came through the window too...

“Uhm. Nette?” Mikael says.

She turns around. “Yes?”

The four children stare helplessly at her from behind the very impressive barrier of masking tape that surrounds them.

“You made the fence too high, stupid,” Leo tells Luke.

Luke punches him in the face.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fuck Mr. Peregrine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29696196) by [Lepak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lepak/pseuds/Lepak)




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